_that_ is the comment, that the note of exclamation, with which Wordsworth commences the stanza next ensuing. When death has invaded the quiet rectory in Miss Tytler’s Huguenot story, we have each servant mysteriously and fanatically delivering her experience in the matter of corpse-candles, death-spells, death-watches, etc., so that one might have learned for all one’s life afterwards to look on one’s death as a dark fate, haunting and hovering over one’s own person and those of beloved friends, from which there is no escape, not even by prayer and fasting; might have learned to “look out for it in dim prognostications, to watch for it, and anticipate its cruel blows in incipient madness.—‘Our Bibles say we know not the day nor the hour,’ said Grand’mère; ‘but He knows—that is enough.’” One of La Bruyère’s _pensées sur la mort_ is, that “ce qu’il y a de certain dans la mort, est un peu adouci par ce qui est incertain: c’est un indéfini dans le tems, qui tient quelque chose de l’infini, et de ce qu’on appelle éternité.” Byron indeed utters the remonstrant query, “Ah! why do darkening shades conceal The hour when man must cease to be?” But his sigh was little in the spirit of the Psalmist’s prayer to be made to know his end, and the measure of his days, what it was. _BEATIFIC VISION AND OVERSHADOWING CLOUD._ ST. LUKE ix. 34. To the three favoured apostles it was granted by their Master to be eye-witnesses of His majesty, when they were with Him on the holy mount. They saw the fashion of His countenance altered, and His raiment become white and glistering. They saw with Him in glory Moses, whose burial-place no man knew, and Elijah, who was translated that he should not see death. And Peter said it was good to be there, and he desired to make that mount of transfiguration a dwelling-place, and to prolong the splendours of that beatific vision. Three tabernacles he proposed to rear, in that eager impetuosity which so often marked his character; at present scarcely knowing what he said, but conscious of a privileged apocalypse, and deprecating its speedy withdrawal. But “while he thus spake, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them; and they feared as they entered into the cloud.” So it was again at a later day, and upon another mount, when the risen Master was asked by His assembled apostles would He at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? Brief was the reply, and no sooner uttered than, while they beheld—gazed wistfully, hopingly, longingly, on the Presence they had so lately lost, and were now eager to retain—while they beheld, “He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.” * * * * * The overshadowing cloud to mar the sunshine is one of the commonest of common-places in man’s experience. Perpetually being verified in prosaic reality, all too real, is the poet’s image— “Across the sunbeam, with a sudden gloom, A ghostly shadow flitted,”